Instructor: T BurnsKIDS WITH KIDS Sexual intercourse and teenage pregnancy have become quit the norm in the United States today. “Why wait until later to become a parent and start a family”, some say. “How can it make my life any worse”, is also a common statement made by teenage girls on becoming a teenage mother. It seems like if relationships do not consist of sexual activities, then there is no relationship at all. More than 8 out of 10 adolescents will have conducted in sexual intercourse by the time they reach 20. This is a statistic that is escalating greatly and continues to escalate as the year’s progress. Since teenage marriage is not a common factor today, most sexual activity occurs outside of marriage. This leads to most unintended pregnancies. Unintended pregnancies then lead to single teenage mothers. The use of contraceptives is not very popular with most teenagers. “I don’t need to use protection”, most say. “It won’t happen to me”, is another common phrase used steer away from the responsibility of using birth control. Many teenagers can and do use contraceptives to avoid Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD’s). Most use them the first time they decide to take on the responsibility of a sexual relationship, but fail to continue the use of them. Nearly 60% of teenage women use some method of birth control. Whether it is a condom, a diaphragm, birth control pills, or whatever else is made available. The most commonly used method of birth control is the condom. It is the one that is made most easily available to young adults. Just because birth control is used does not mean that it used correctly. Some teenagers fail to use them right or fail to use them at all. This conducts in most of unintended pregnancies. Unintended pregnancies are a huge problem in the United States today. Overall one million U.S. teenagers become pregnant every year. Only 15% of these are planned. Which means 85% of the pregnancies that occur in this country are unintentional. Out of that 85%, two-thirds of them are 18-19 year old young women. Although the increase of sexual activity has vastly increased in the last two decades, the rate of unintended teenage pregnancies has declined by 19%. This goes to prove that some teenagers are making use of the contraceptives that are available. Even though the number of unintended pregnancies has declined, there are still many that continue to have unplanned births. About half of pregnancies to adolescents end in birth. A little over a third end in abortion, and the remainder in miscarriage. The majority of teenage girls that go through adolescent childbearing are low-income teenagers. Most of who are unmarried. Almost 70% of higher income teenagers who become pregnant choose to have abortions. They have the choice of postponing childbearing so they can continue their education or pursue a career. Options are still left open to low-income teenagers who decide to abort the pregnancy and continue with their education. For whatever reason they do not feel like taking on the responsibility of a mother. Teenage pregnancy is one of the top reasons kids drop out of school. Be it the mother that can not find a baby sitter for the child. The father may not have any other choice but to drop out and find a job to support his new child. Some schools offer programs to single or teenage parents. They consist of taking the child to school and leaving them at a child care center while the parents attends class. The parent will spend time with the child on breaks. Although this sounds like a good program, only a third of teenagers utilize it. As you can see sexual activity is now common among teenagers now in the United States. Although the majority of unplanned pregnancies are among low-income women, it still continues to be a problem among all teenage women. Most will not realize how much of a sacrafice being a parent is. Or how much money is to be invested in a child. These are factors that will not play a part in their life until the time comes. “We live by our mistakes”, some say. But a child can never be a mistake. Children do not ask to be born into this world.

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